Traditional medicines were established using indigenous experience and knowledge of the environment and nature.
Plants, herbs, and spices contain countless bioactive compounds that have benefited human health for thousands of years.
Apart from their use in the local communities, this knowledge of the therapeutic effect of natural products has been used to discover new drugs in modern scientific research.
Natural molecules and their analogs have a major impact on the health industry.
Botanicals contain numerous bioactive principles worth investigating for pharmaceutical and medical researchers.
To develop highly-performing medicines from natural ingredients, R&D scientists in the pharmaceutical industry should be able to rely on high-quality research instruments.
METTLER TOLEDO offers precise, high-quality instrumentation to enable fast, accurate testing of raw materials, intermediate products, and final formulation of natural products.
For Quality Assurance, METTLER TOLEDO supports traditional medicines manufacturers for physical contamination detection, fill level control, package integrity, completeness checks, and track and trace implementation.
Developing a successful ingredient from a natural source is a multistep process:
Using the knowledge of traditional medicines, plants are selected, and scientists perform a systematic screening of their extracts to isolate bioactive fractions.
Researchers isolate the extracts, assess their bioactivity, and characterize the structure of the active constituents.
The main goal is to reveal the most active fractions and to correlate the bioactivity with the responsible molecules or families of molecules.
Once the range of candidates has been narrowed, the processes to further develop the pharmaceutical ingredients are adapted to preferentially extract and purify the most active fractions and potentiate their bioactivities.
The molecule is ready to start preclinical and clinical trials at this stage.
Natural products are subjected to rigorous quality control testing to ensure safety and efficacy for consumers; among them:
Water and moisture content of the raw material and final product
Refractive index and density of oil extracts
Titration of peroxide value, iodine value, saponification value, and free fatty acids
METTLER TOLEDO provides a wide range of products that enable conducting these analysis quickly and effectively.
